born in Upper Austria, has an university entrance qualification, studied for one year in Vienna and was educated as a dancer in Vienna and Munich. She was engaged as a performer in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Russia and Lithuania. Since 1996 she has been working on her own choreographies and ideas, which have also lead to installation works and collaborations with other artists. 1999 she was award winner of the Prix du Festival Cour des Capucins in Luxembourg. 2003 she got a scholar-ship from Munich and founded the community umluft with Eva Forler and Helmut Ott, two other choreographers. She is member of Tanztendenz Munich e.V., which is supported by the town of Munich, and has been working lately with Tanztendenz on the conception for the choreographer’s atelier PIRACY TAKE OVER. Since 2003 she has been training Tai Chi Dao Yin and Choy Lay Fut Kung Fu, since 2005 she has started a Shiatsu treatment education.

2005/06 she was invited together with the brazilian choreographer Gustavo Ciríaco to the project Close Encounters (alkantara Lisbon in collaboration with Panorama de Danca, Rio de Janeiro).

Gustavo Ciríaco

Brazilian. Dancer-choreographer and former political scientist. From 1995 until 2005, he formed with Frederico Paredes the Dupla de Dança Ikswalsinats, a company officially supported by the City of Rio de Janeiro, where they developed a singular choreographic research allying humour to contemporary dance. Since 2003 he’s been leading independent choreographic projects with other artists, as Jorge (2003) or in solo with An Imaginary Conference (2004). He has performed in important festivals and projects in Brazil and abroad (SpringDance Preview, Panorama de Dança, Alkantara, NottDance). In June 2006, he premiered in Lisbon the piece Aqui enquanto caminhamos / Here whilst we walk, with the Austrian artist Andrea Sonnberger, a co-production between Alkantara and Panorama festivals, with performances in Rio de Janeiro, London, Madrid, Nottingham, Bristol, Birmingham and Munich. Besides this project, Ciríaco has been developing the dance/visual arts project Ainda / Still, with Brazilian and Norwegian artists. He is member of the collective Contágio and of the improvisation group Coletivo Improviso. Ciríaco teaches Dance History and is translator of dance-related texts. Questions as presence/presentness, cultural/personal identity, perception and discourse, are specially constant in his work.
The artists Andrea Sonnberger and Gustavo Ciríaco take the public for an urban walk. Inspired by the long tradition which links walk to the production of thought and awareness, the two performers start a silent journey through the city. A changing contact with a space that moves and is moved instantaneously.

Walking silently and without the shield of a camera also confers a sense of respect : given that we can not click the moment for another time, the perfomance forces us to be here......I am caught between waiting an acting. I see this as an opportunity to explore the sphere of responsibility of ourselves as audience........ Being "here whilst we walk" was both dislocating but also an experience of being attentive to the occurring present. As I further fumble with the kites strings, somewhat peeved with my lack of coordination, a little voice cuts through my impatience and asks : How here can we actually be ?...........Wietske Maas

here whilst we talk

is a series of lectures held by specially invited artists and thinkers from England, Gemany, Brazil and Austria. As a common point their interest in creating, producing and thinking art works and experiences outside the normal spaces for art. An esthetical approach to the nearby enviroment, starting with the simplest of the actions : walking.

Simon Whitehead "walks to Illuminate" - on his night walks with people wearing illuminated shoes, which have been charged by other people who have worn them during the daylight.

Gustavo Ciríaco and Andrea Sonnbergers on their walking performance "here whilst we walk".

Jane Greenfields on working with gardens which she wants to combine with her profession as a curator.

Angela Daubers - ‘People in Cities’ - on her texts which have been created while walking through Lisbon’s famous and unknown quarters.

Wolfgang Lehnerer and Patrick Hartl on their different approaches on graffiti art.

Micha Purucker - on his dérive-tours where he sent couples onto the streets, a different way of meeting and knowing the city.

Apart from here whilst we walk everyone is invited to the lectures and discussions. Attendance on the tours is not compulsory but is recommended as one can contribute to post-walk discussions by sharing one’s own experiences.

throughout the journey
you undertake within nothingness
and through which you carry
the name of your flesh

„Terra“ - sung by the Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso

In account of the initial invitation to participate in Lisbon in the project Encontros 05-06(an initiative of Alkantara festival in collaboration with the Brazilian festival Panorama Rio Dança), in which there would be a partnership with another creator, from another country, another culture, two words marked our meeting alongside the first considerations : contact and displacement. The former one in direct relation with the meeting itself and the last one due to the fact of our actual need to displace ourselves for this project. Out of these two words, which would maybe come to serve as the bridge between us two, we started to get interested in doing this contact in displacement, as a sort of continuous experimentation where the place itself would always be moving and moved. Reminding a bit the flâneur of the XIXth century, someone that wanders through the streets, observing each detail, without being noticed, without impressing himself onto the surrounding landscape, observer of the modern cities under a non-stop transformation, a witness of an amazing and subtle spectacle in front of his very eyes.

Aqui enquanto caminhamos / Here whilst we walk invests on the possibilities of inhabiting the urban space through another politics of sharing and of perception. Taken in a walk through the invisible, but sensible, archictecture produced by the pedestrians and their living of the urban space, the audience is also invited to imprint his/her own presence in real time and space.